New Bundesliga season brings technological investments

Germany’s Bundesliga is one of the most-watched football leagues in the world and has invested in new technologies for the upcoming season.

Source: EVS

In a move that merges its television, radio and online editorial offices, German public broadcaster WDR has built a sports campus fitted with a completely new live production infrastructure. This Cologne-based facility now accommodates a centralized multimedia production team dedicated to the output of live sports programming and features two DYVI live video switchers from EVS.

The new production infrastructure was put in place in the state of the art facility ahead of the 2017/2018 season. From here, one of WDR’s new software-defined DYVI switchers is being deployed to produce the popular Sportschau sports report, which is broadcast on ARD and has covered every Bundesliga match weekend since 1961. MTI – one of Germany’s leading media operators and technical facility providers has also taken delivery of a DYVI switcher, which was implemented into the new sports center it built for Eurosport. This will act as the production base for the network’s live sports coverage, including that of the Bundesliga.

Alongside these new users is content solution provider Plazamedia who was the first to implement a DYVI switcher from EVS. Following the season of last year running a new live remote production, Plazamedia will again deploy DYVI for the Sports1 Check24 Doppelpass show – a talk show dedicated to the German football league.

Enhanced UHD-4K production

To support the company’s growth and increase the amount of live programming produced in-house, Sky Deutschland has built a new 1700m² broadcast center dedicated to the production of sports programming. Built next to its headquarters in Unterföhring, near Munich, the center features multiple EVS technologies, including servers which deliver the pay-tv provider over 150 flexible channels of I/O.

Within this broadcast center’s three studios, MCR and post-production facilities, Sky Deutschland has integrated XT4K, XT3 and XS3 live production servers as well as an IPDirector production asset management system, LSM Connect and XFile3. This deployment means Sky Deutschland can produce its live Bundesliga action, half-time and post-match analysis and dedicated magazine shows – in both HD and UHD-4K.

Due to increased demand for live coverage of today’s biggest sporting events, facilities company HD Broadcast also underwent upgrades to its OB fleet ahead of the 2017/2018 Bundesliga season with six XT4K live production servers installed alongside several LSM – with the Dual-LSM mode which allows two operators to share a single server – and LSM Connect, two XFile3 systems and MultiReview tools. In addition to its selection of a DYVI switcher, MTI also chose the XT4K server, an IPDirector PAM system and LSM Connect interface for Eurosport’s sports production center. IPDirector and LSM Connect let users swiftly manage content and asset playlists, respectively, while XFile3 makes it easier for the exchange and archive of files during live operation. MultiReview gives the director fast access to a synchronous view of all the camera angles available in a production without needing to rely on an operator, which enables a faster highlights production process.

Fighting illegal online content sharing

Nagra, a Kudelski Group (SIX:KUD.S) announced that the DFL Deutsche Fußball Liga GmbH has selected Nagra as a partner in its fight against illegal content sharing of live Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 matches over the internet via IPTV.

As IPTV piracy has grown exponentially and becomes mainstream news in recent months, the DFL has chosen to leverage Nagra’s anti-piracy services and global intelligence network to track, monitor and stop illicit sharing of the league’s Bundesliga championships for the 2017-18 season. This will protect the value of Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2 matches for both the DFL and DFL licensees around the world.

“Piracy today takes on many different forms, in particular with plug-and-play, Kodi add-on-based devices capable of streaming content to the big screen. A new approach is required to fight illegal online content distribution and return viewers to the legitimate video value chain,” said Frédéric Guitard, Vice President Anti-Piracy Nagra.

The Anti-Piracy Services enable sports rights holders, content owners and service providers to understand and manage today’s piracy ecosystem and the various piracy methods in operation around the world – from key sharing to content sharing and streaming (IPTV) piracy. They provide deep intelligence about global pirate networks with real-time monitoring, takedown and litigation capabilities to counter illegal online content and protect a content owner’s bottom line. Combined with the content protection technologies card-based and cardless conditional access and NexGuard forensic watermarking, they help both service providers and content owners create the closed-loop approach to piracy to secure, mark, monitor, detect, identify and act.